Tips for new (and some not-so-new) healers

[ariaandkia]

Not to be rude, but this statement here says to me you don't really play a Scholar. I can tell you that Scholar off-DPS adds an absolutely laughable amount of enmity (ie. very little). Were you to get aggro off the tank from dotting and multidotting, Ruin spamming, Energy Draining, whatever - you name it - you would have a gigantic tank issue at hand. You are spending most of your Scholaring days in the glorious green aggro zone, free of worry and pain. (Possibly hitting yellow with intensive Succoring!)

Most tanks I've met can't handle a SINGLE non-crit cure (Cure I) or physick when at critical health. Soon as I do it, either all but 1 mob on the tank comes to me or...


All the mobs come to me period.

And yes, I am fairly new at scholar (I've done a lot of healing as Arc though since some healers ditch the party-probably same reason as tanks do (had one tank quit/rejoin the party like 20 times in 15 minutes trying to join his party for commendation farming-whatever happened to the 30 minute wait and why is it so hard for some people to get commendations?)). As for "laughable" it might be laughable at first but it adds up in prolonged battles. Great when you start at green then by the time your dot ends, it turns orange, then an actual physick/adol/etc. when needed turns it red. This is WITHOUT Ruin or Energy Drain. This is just from my DoT rotation.

Same thing happens with WHM. I put on a DoT and that can be the difference between pulling the enemies off the tank.

When ONE heal of the WEAKEST type NONCRIT can pull ALL the mobs off your tank when he is about to die if you don't, doing DPS is not helping the situation.

On the PLUS side... It is safer as a SCH since most likely, your pet will get the aggro before you do if you are just DPS'ing and not healing (though if your pet dies from the amount of damage it is pulling...)

[AnimaAnimus]

Most tanks I've met can't handle a SINGLE non-crit cure (Cure I) or physick when at critical health. Soon as I do it, either all but 1 mob on the tank comes to me or...

All the mobs come to me period.

Well this isn't a healer issue, this is a very very bad tank issue. Unless you are curing before he has had a chance to establish hate, even then a tank should be able to get them off you easily. This is also not most tanks that I nor my friends have met. Tanks I have run with, even strangers in df pts can handle me curing, curagaing, nuking, doting, etc etc without loosing hate or being able to regain control of a rouge mob if they happen to stray, even in large pulls. Regardless its a poor excuse to use for not dpsing/curing and any healer worth their salt will tell you the same. Enmity control is part of the healers game as well as the tanks.

You need to know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away, know when to run

[ariaandkia]

Well this isn't a healer issue, this is a very very bad tank issue. Unless you are curing before he has had a chance to establish hate, even then a tank should be able to get them off you easily. This is also not most tanks that I nor my friends have met. Tanks I have run with, even strangers in df pts can handle me curing, curagaing, nuking, doting, etc etc without loosing hate or being able to regain control of a rouge mob if they happen to stray, even in large pulls. Regardless its a poor excuse to use for not dpsing/curing and any healer worth their salt will tell you the same. Enmity control is part of the healers game as well as the tanks.

You need to know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away, know when to run

I'm sorry, but when DPSing can lead to a party wipe, I'll avoid the DPS and leave it to someone else. Enmity control is part of the healer's job, but...If the tank can't hold enmity, not much can be done except minimize enmity. I've had to turn cleric stance on while healing before just to try to lower my heals enough that the tank could hold aggro through my first heal. Of course, this only helped for the first heal.

Maybe I'm just unlucky with tanks, but honestly, I think it should be the healer's decision whether to DoT, Nuke, DPS, or w/e. All healers should heal, but beyond that should really be on the healer's call.

As for "not healing" if not healing one person means I can save the rest, I'll drop that one person. Example. Group (with a decent tank) is fighting 6 mobs, semi struggling, but otherwise doing fine. One guy suddenly decides to pull every mob they can find to the group.

Generally? I don't heal them because more often than not, it will cause a party wipe. And if the tank doesn't see a reason to try to hold aggro on the extra mobs, I see no reason to force him to try. Just let the DPS die so that the rest of the party will be safe.

But I guess I'm not worth my salt since I choose to not heal them.